Google’s Chief Game Designer Resigns as Opportunities “Failed to Materialise”

Google had a Chief Game Designer, Noah Falstein to be exact. He has 37 years of games industry experience having been at LucasArts, DreamWorks Interactive and 3DO. In 2013, he was hired by Google for the Chief Game Designer role and now, he has resigned from the post.

The news came as Falstein posted on his personal blog, The Inspiracy. In it, he wrote

It seemed an auspicious time to be able to make games at a company known for its world-spanning technology. Unfortunately, the opportunity to actually build the big, consequential games that I had been hired to help create failed to materialize, even as the world market for games has continued to grow in size, diversity, and geographic reach. Accordingly, I’ve decided to leave Google, and today, April 6, was my last day.

He isn’t bitter or anything juicy like that, he doesn’t hold anything against Google. In fact, in his post, he goes on to praise the web giant and his ex-colleagues. He goes on to give a hint of where his next challenge lies, in the virtual world of VR.

Before I came to Google I had the pleasure of working on a number of health and neuroscience game titles, and that field is now maturing, and I think about to come into its own both in terms of its benefits to humanity, and feasibility as a business. Related to that, I think the emotional connections possible in VR, most prominently shown in the empathy evoked by a sense of physical proximity and eye contact that no previous technology can match, is going to open up an entire new merging of movies, interaction, and games that may need a new name.

Google has stepped into the world of gaming in the past. In fact, a year before hiring Falstein the company released Ingress through their internal game developer Niantic Labs. Niantic then broke away in 2015 and created one of the biggest mobile hits in recent times, Pokémon GO.